‘We should not have gone there!’ looking in to the sea Alaya shut the window, looking in to whatever happened today morning. The Sun and the sky seemed unmoved now. But the tides, the waves on this side of the window were on a roll. Kavya was on the bed trying to weave shells in to a necklace. Old shells which she had come across while cleaning the cupboard yesterday. Old shells that had been lying hidden in a closet far behind the wilted newspapers. Secretly hidden. One couldn’t say whose secret was it, but surely it belonged to one of them.
‘Why?’ She gazed up. Alaya shot eyes at her and picked up a cigarette. ‘Even after today you need any clarification? The way P panicked…what else you need to see Madam detective? It is so evident.’ She crossed her arms across her chest with the cigarette rolling between her slender fingers.
‘And if I knew before that, this was your intention, your plan, I would never have agreed to come. So much for - oh let’s all meet, I am missing u types, huh!’ She turned back. ‘How could I forget that you would not ever do anything without you benefitting out of it?’
‘And what do you think is my benefit?’ Kavya retorted.
‘Maybe you are the one who did it and now trying to put the blame on the weakest of us just to save your pricking conscience.’ Came back Alaya.
A bitter taste arose over Kavya’s tongue. She never could imagine herself being at the needle of the suspicion. For a moment she doubted herself. She pulled out the threads of events and incidents from the deep crevices within her and reran them. The round circumference of the necklace in her hands turned in to a screen. She could not pinpoint exactly who but it wasn’t her. Not in any case.
‘Very innovative. Good to know your brain still works Mrs. Singhania.’ Kavya threw a pillow at her in disgust. Alaya was about to retort when her gaze fell on P and so followed Kavya. This banter of theirs was no fun without their referee.
Penny was fast asleep in a corner curled up in to a ball on the same bed. The pills had worked on her. Kavya brushed aside Penny’s hair falling on her eyes. She stared in to the bottle of pills which had replaced them in Penny’s life. For this, she felt responsible and no amount of rerun could erase that.
‘Nah!’ She looked back at Alaya. ‘I don’t believe it. I still think there is something else to it that we are missing. And while almost drowning Penny did shout in the waters that she did not do anything.’
‘Kaun chor apni galati manta hai?’ Alaya winked.
‘Sshhhh.’ Kavya put a finger on Alaya’s lips. She was trying not to wake Penny up.
‘Exactly. Better shut your detective ki dukaan otherwise she will have a nervous breakdown.’ Alaya slammed herself on the chair.
‘And I hate that boy. He ruined our lives then and now his edited carbon copy has arrived to make it hell again. Literally.’ She grabbed Kavya’s hand and whispered eyeing the verandah.
***
John knocked at the already opened door. He did not raise his eyes and got busy with clearing the plates. Alaya kept staring at him. Suddenly she jumped and slapped on his arm.
‘A have you gone mad, how can you hit him.’ Kavya alerted her.
‘Ahoy! I am not hitting him. There was a big mosquito on his arm. ‘See it’s gone. I never kill them, just make them fly away.’ She chuckled a sheepish smile to him. He did not smile back and left.
‘A, how could you?’ Kavya caught her arm.
‘Was just checking if he is for real.’
‘You have doubts?’
‘But so much for a coincidence?’ Her scurrying eyes found a partner in Kavya’s. Their hands joining in the battle.
Penny lay rested like a child in her dreams. Kavya wished at least in the dream she could be that little girl in yellow dress frolicking about in Vijay Uncle’s lap. ‘That is what I want.’ Kavya announced. ‘To get rid of her anxiety, her panic, her guilt which has also made a home in both of us as well.’
‘And how? By torturing her?’ Alaya sniggered.
‘No. By making her accept.’ Kavya uttered hesitatingly. ‘Confess. May be!’ She could not gaze up as she continued, ‘Remember Penny has always been so talented. I read an article on her last week that said – no one could film a woman like she does.’
‘Really?’ Alaya bit her lip to hold back a fleeting smile. ‘I always had those doubts.’ Sobriety could never hold on to her for long.
‘Shut up silly. Not that ways. The whole Bollywood is gaga over her but sadly her life hinges on these pills.’ Kavya held them up in the air. She recalled how much time and years of meditation it took it for her to get off them.
‘But she is the one who began this circus. No?’ Flaring her nostrils Alaya bit in to the cashews. ‘Remember, right here! Right on that beautiful mahogany which has been conveniently frisked away and a lookalike’s family is enjoying dinner all over it! Awesome!’ She grunted and snapped her fingers.
‘We offered Jenny to take it away, A.’ Kavya clarified.
‘Right and the matter ended.’ Alaya straightened up.
‘Same ways it should have ended then. He proposed to you, you said NO and that is it. All should have gone home and lived happily ever after. But no? Madam P had to put her foot in to the mess.’ Alaya came and sat right in front of Kavya. She took away the work-in-progress necklace from her hands to explain.
‘Okay, we may not have rather no one would have agreed with the tamasha he did while proposing you, but still. For God’s sake, he was madly in love. A bollywoody teen, shitdeep in romance. So, what if he made a huge painting of yours in a bikini he saw you first in, come on, this is Goa, bikini is like, like these denims, no? By the way, I never found you that hot in them but still?’ She lit another cigarette.
‘So, what if he sang from the roof tops. So, what if he cried and howled on getting dumped. It was Valentines’ Day and we were kids. It should have been ignored that ways. But no. Madam crusader took an offence, when you didn’t, I didn’t. Remember Princess of Goa did not sleep for two days. And the third day – Voila!’
Alaya rushed up and forced open the window to push her rolls of smoke out on to the sea.
No one knew how did Penny convince or lure him. None even got the opportunity to ask once they all got caught in that storm, of whose whirlwinds began right here in that pirouette. Maybe he was actually in deep love with Kavya. Or was too naive, a fool to fall in Penny’s trap to believe that Kavya was secretly shyly waiting for him, that he still had a chance. But he was there dancing to the same song, in the same bikini, on the same mahogany. Penny had called up the girls to be here by eleven for the surprise of their lives. And it was. Gyrating awkwardly to her instructions as she moved her video camera in tandem. How did he fit in to this two piece? Kavya recalled wondering to her.
‘I got two sizes bigger.’ She replied and blew a kiss at him. The moment he saw Kavya, he flustered and stopped abruptly, awkwardly, covering himself with his bare hands. A deep blush rose all over him, all over his softest and warmest possible pink skin. The kind of pink to put any girl to shame. The next moment Kavya was on the floor laughing and rolling. The hysterical jerks in her body had pushed fluid out of her eyes, making her unable to have a clear look of him as the fuzzy and the blurred silhouette doubled up.
‘Stop it K.’ Kavya remembered Penny shaking her up. ‘He has already left’.
‘How else did you expect me to react to this buffoonery?’ She had reacted.
Penny had rushed out after him when Kavya’s gaze fell upon a card on the floor pockmarked with impressions of her heels that he had offered to her yesterday. She had thrown it on the floor and stomped on it.
***
‘But that did not kill him.’ Kavya shook it off her head as she had done millions of times all these years to get rid of this visual which lay hidden secretly in some corner in the alleys of her mind. It had the knack of jumping up in front of her eyes whenever a muscle beneath her skin tried to pull up a smile. But facts are facts. He was pretty much alive for whole of the week. So, she could not be held responsible.
‘But that is what triggered the mayhem, right? And if not her then who?’ Alaya looked back and walked planting her feet on the ground like flowers lay beneath them, towards the door. ‘It has to be either of us, then? Or there is someone who was aware of everything? Yes, that is pretty possible. No?’ With that she kicked back the door with full force. A loud crash boomed.
Kavya jumped to have a look. Cracked pieces of fine porcelain plates each cradling its floral beads lay strewn on the floor. A rugged skinned hand was briskly moping them up. On the stool next to it, a tray with coffee pot and cups was heaving a sigh of relief.
‘Careful Jenny. You may get hurt.’ Kavya got down to help her.
‘But what was she doing here, eaves dropping again?’ Alaya grunted.
‘I got you coffee.’ Jenny quickly got up and grabbed the tray from the stool.
Kavya touched it with furrowed eyes. ‘Thanks, but isn’t it already cold Jenny?’ Jenny did not look up and got busy with placing the pot and cups on the table.
‘I told you.’ Alaya smirked.
‘Shhh! She is just a curious old hag.’ Kavya whispered to Alaya while stepping in.
‘And I never did it.’ Meanwhile Penny decided to get up with a loud declaration. Probably, she was still in her dream.
But she was not.
‘Come on in Jenny.
Of all the people here only, you know the pain of taking in the blame, bearing the blame of the murder you did not commit. Come darling’. She waved at her.
‘Let me clear all that mess first madam’. Jenny offered.
‘No, no. You just sit, the mess will never go and even if goes for a while it will always come back, after all who will take the blame?’ Penny was rambling in the remains of her slumber. The girls looked at each other.
‘What do you say J? Now that you know all.’ Waved Penny.
How could she call her J, the girls mumbled. Only the three of them were allowed to call each other with their first alphabets. It was their secret pact.
‘P you need rest.’ Kavya tried to stop her but she threw off her hand. ‘I am absolutely fine.’ She forced a smile and looked at Jenny again anticipating her response.
‘The truth must be found out madam, mine and yours, both.’
She pierced her eyes in to Penny and got up.
‘And much before anyone else does.’ She walked up to Alaya who was intently twirling her sacred pendant.
‘I had one, same as this. It had ‘J’ engraved on its back.’ Jenny turned towards the girls.
‘You see, all of us in my family have been named starting with J since generations. In fact, I share my name with two of my aunts who are now dead, thankfully.’ She laughed. She reached the door and turned back with resounding heave of the plates in her tray.
‘We lost it years back. Still looking for it.’ Jenny.
Alaya stopped twirling it and stuffed it behind her T – shirt.